Drop in Bounce Rate in Google Analytics

[ChemistryMarketing]

Hi guys,

I have recently seen a large drop in bounce rate (from GA) which seems unnatural for one of our clients website.

Since the start of 2018, the bounce rate was consistently between 40-60%, and then saw a random spike, and now for the past two weeks, the bounce rate is below 10%.

I was wondering if anyone had any ideas if this is a problem with GA, or the site itself.

Site: https://www.zoomocarcredit.com/

Any comments/feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Jack.

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[ThompsonPaul]

Great to hear you've been able to fix it. Nice job tracking down the extra tag in GTM.

If you haven't also done so, it'll be worth looking at the Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages report to check out the actual bounce rate for a wide selection of pages. Just to make sure there aren't any problematic tags triggered for individual pages as well.

(And thanks for the Good Answer vote )

Paul

[ChemistryMarketing]

Hi Paul,

Huge thanks for the response. I have removed one the GA tags in GTM, and this seems to have fixed the issue (Google's Tag Assistant is now displaying one pageview request)

GA is now displaying a more "natural" bounce rate. The bounce rate for the site was 56.80% yesterday, compared to 4.48% on Sunday.

Thanks for your help!

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[ThompsonPaul]

You have an error in your Analytics configuration in Google Tag Manager. It is causing two pageviews to be fired for each visit. (Note - all you pageview data and related - pgs/visit, conversion rate etc - will be incorrect and unreliable from that date, not just your bounce rate.)

If you click on the 1st Analytics entry in the Result of Tag Analysis in your Tag Assistant, you'll see the double pageviews that are messing your data.

Easiest way to track it down is to use the history feature of GTM to look at what changes were deployed in GTM on the date the issue started.

Places to look - duplicate triggers, or a tracking event that is misconfigured to create a new pageview.

Hope that helps you find it!

Paul

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[ChemistryMarketing]

Hi Vijay,

I originally thought this was the issue. I have ran Google's Tag Assistant and got the following results (see attachment).

It is displaying a duplicate remarketing tag, although I can only see one mention in the source code - could this be an issue?

Again, any further help is hugely appreciated.

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[Vijay-Gaur]

Can you try looking at the source code of the website page and see whether it has more than one google analytics code.

[ChemistryMarketing]

Hi Sean & Vijay,

Thanks for your replies.

After looking into GA a little further (during the time where their has been a large drop in bounce rate) I can see that some of the pages on the site are receiving a 0% bounce rate, although they are receiving page view.

I am now presuming this is an issue with how GA is implemented on the site.

Any further help is hugely appreciated.

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[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi Jack,

In addition to what Sean is suggesting, you can have a look at this Q&A discussion

https://moz.com/community/q/bounce-rate-suddenly-drops-on-google-anal

Regards,

Vijay

[TucsonAZWebDesign]

Well generally speaking , the lower your bounce rate the better. As Rand stated in a White board Friday, that isn't always the case. For example when the goal of the landing page you've designing is to get a conversion, you want your customers payment and then you want to send them on their way. If it takes 10 minutes and 5 pages, then there is something wrong with your site and you would naturally need to correct it.

But in many cases if your visitor found a piece of content to continue browsing through your page due to the first page being compelling enough not to leave after initially viewing it, that's a good thing.

As to pinning down the cause of this sudden drop, I think the best approach is by using either Google Analytics or another tracking analytical tool to review the traffic to the page and focus in on the most landed on pages and determine what pages they're going to afterwards onsite. That will have your answer.